


Blackberries

by wneleh



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: At the deadline, Gen, Kidfic, near-drowning, prompt: Lost, rhinksummerficathon2k16
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-07-27 15:39:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7624321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wneleh/pseuds/wneleh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Link looked around, but couldn’t see where the little boy’s people were.  That was troubling; you should never swim by yourself, especially in the ocean, especially if you were a little kid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blackberries

**Author's Note:**

> In an Ear Biscuit (I think), Link said that, while at the shore with Rhett's family, he managed to flash his penis - I forget the details, but the upshot was, he thought that this might be a friendship-destroyer. Poor Link. Anyway, I ran with this snippet of story; everything else is made up.

Blackberries

Link had no idea how it had happened; it WOULDN’T have happened at home, he was very careful at home to keep everything in its place. Briefs, and proper shorts or pants with proper zippers.

But here at the beach, in this too-short, too-loose swimsuit… on a bed that was completely unfamiliar, was too soft…

And Rhett hadn’t said a thing, didn’t say, “Hey, dude, I see your penis,” or “Look down,” or even “Maybe you should go to the bathroom.” No, it had probably been out of place for at least half an hour, and Rhett had said nothing, had just laughed at how red Link’s face had gotten once he’d noticed.

Link had dashed into the bathroom and run the water so that Rhett wouldn’t be able to hear him cry. He’d wanted to go home, he’d wanted to go home so badly, and if he’d had any idea which way the bus station was (or even known for sure that there was a bus station) he’d have left.

He’d had no idea how to get out of the bathroom, but then Mama Di had knocked on the door and said that Mr. McLaughlin had taken Rhett and Cole down to the boardwalk to pick up a couple of quarts of ice cream, and did he think he’d want some that night? And he’d said, no, he was tired and wanted to go to bed.

So he’d ended up in bed way too early, and now he couldn’t sleep. Would Rhett and Cole even want to stay in the same room with him anymore? 

He rolled into his pillow, the pillow that yesterday had smelled like infinite possibilities, and pounded the mattress with his hand. He’d ruined everything. It had been so easy to ruin everything.

\- - - - - 

Sleep was a strange thing. You’d think you could never, ever do it, and then suddenly you had,

It took Link several moments to remember why he’d thought he wouldn’t sleep. Then it filled him – he’d let his penis show. He was a pervert. Nobody liked perverts, nobody wanted perverts around their sons, especially not people like the McLaughlins.

It was light enough in the room to make out Cole sleeping in the bottom bunk of the other bunkbed. And now that he was listening, he could hear Rhett breathing right above him. Link slipped out of bed and headed into the kitchen. It so clean and organized, not like any kitchen you actually lived in. But that was the way with weekly rentals, Rhett had said, everything was perfect until it wasn’t anymore.

Mama Di was already up, and she noticed him before he saw her. “There you are!” she said. “You feeling okay?”

Link shrugged. Rhett must not have told her what had happened, which made sense. You didn’t say ‘penis’ to your mother.

“You and Rhett have a fight?”

He shook his head.

“You missing your mama?”

He shrugged again. 

“It’s okay to be a little homesick,” Mama Di said. “It’s completely natural.”

Link wasn’t homesick – or he didn’t think he was, at least – but it was a good reason to leave. “So I can take the bus back today?” he asked, looking down.

“No of course not!” said Mama Di. “It’s just been two nights. Today will be wonderful.”

“I can afford it,” Link persisted. “My mama gave me plenty of spending money.” Don’t let them pay for everything, his mother had told him about twenty times. Pay your own way.

“Give it one more day,” Mama Di said, smiling. 

Link murmured, “Okay.”

“Thank you,” said Mama Di. “So, what do you want to do today? It’s your vacation too. You get a say. I’m going to go blackberry picking. Would you like to join me?”

Link shrugged. If it would get him away from Rhett, it might not be so bad. 

“Well, when I head out I’ll see if you want to come,” said Mama Di. “In the meantime, how about seeing if that TV picks up any cartoon stations.”

\- - - - - -

This time when he awoke he remembered immediately what had gone terribly, terribly wrong. Unfortunately this hadn’t been enough of a shock to Rhett’s system to keep him from flinging beautiful vacation rental pillows at his older brother in the living room. (“That’s why they’re called ‘throw pillows’,” Rhett had said when they’d moved in two days ago.) A pillow’d hit Link square in the face, and Link suspected that others had come awfully close.

“Mom said to tell you she was sorry she didn’t wake you but you looked too peaceful,” said Rhett. “If you want she’ll take you blueberry picking later in the week.”

Link didn’t have an answer. Neither did he have an excuse for not accompanying Rhett, Cole, and Mr. McLaughlin down to the beach a few minutes later – he was even still in his red swim trunks, Rhett had to point out.

Rhett and Cole had both picked up skim boards yesterday, and were determined to either learn to use them or break their necks in the attempt. Yesterday Link had taken turns as well; today he just wished he was invisible. He sat a while, but his legs started to ache from being bent oddly on account of there being no chair, just sand, so he got up and started walking along the high tide/dune grass line. 

The shore wasn’t straight, and pretty soon he couldn’t see (or hear) the other boys, or Mr. McLaughlin, or, really, anyone at all.

He was an Indian, this was his island, he lived on fish and edible plants, which he cooked over an open fire every night. 

He was an explorer, shipwrecked on this island. For years he’d hoped for rescue, but he’d learned the ways of birds and other wild beasts and now they were his kin.

He was the first white man in America, living where the coast jutted out into the ocean, repugnant to the Indians so reaching toward his own people. Some day he’d swim to England.

He was a missionary… okay, how would THAT work out?

He was a scientist, collecting samples in this wild, unoccupied land…

Well, mostly unoccupied. There was a little boy offshore by himself, jumping with the waves. Doing pretty well, Link had just learned to do it yesterday and wasn’t great at it yet.

Link looked around, but couldn’t see where the boy’s people were. That was troubling; you should never swim by yourself, especially in the ocean, especially if you were a little kid.

Would he get into trouble if he went out to the boy? Link’s mother had made him promise not to go into the water unless Mr. McLaughlin or Mama Di were RIGHT THERE. Not Rhett, not Cole even, it had to be a parent.

But he was almost like a parent to the little boy, maybe? So it was okay?

Link waded through wash, then went through the curl of the waves like Mr. McLaughlin had taught them yesterday. Soon he was past the roughest part, and jumping over the swells. The water started to get deep, and he was swimming now, his feet no longer touching sand, and still he hadn’t made it to where the boy was.

But soon his toes were brushing pebbles; and then he was walking; and by the time he was out to the boy, the water was no deeper than his belly button some of the time. It was a lot higher on the little boy, of course, and he had to jump with the waves to keep his head above water.

“You okay?” Link asked.

“Yeah,” said the boy.

“You getting tired?” Link asked.

“No,” said the boy.

“Do you know how to swim?” Link asked.

“Kinda,” said the boy.

“You hiding from someone?” Link asked.

“Kinda,” said the boy.

A bigger-than-most wave came through and the boy was knocked off his shallow spot. Link watched him struggle to place his feet, then closed the distance between them and picked him up. In the water, he weighted next to nothing.

“What did you do?” Link asked the boy. “Did you break something?”

He couldn’t be sure, but Link thought the boy nodded.

“Well, let’s get back to shore. Maybe I can help you fix it, okay?”

“I broke the um-ber-el-la,” said the boy, “I let it fly away.”

“Oh, I bet your folks were mad as heck!” said Link. “But I’ll talk to them for you, okay?”

Again, the boy nodded.

Link carried the boy on his hip for a while, but as the water got deeper he had him move to his back, thinking he could swim with him above water. This was a complete failure, but Link found that he could keep the boy’s head above water if he did astronaut jumps, springing off the bottom as hard as he could.

It really wasn’t very far at all.

By the time he was able to walk instead of jump, there were people on the beach, including a couple of lifeguards. He considered putting the boy down and running but there was really no place to go. 

And then the some of the people, including a lifeguard and Rhett’s father, were coming toward them. The lifeguard took the boy out of Link’s arms (he was getting heavy anyway, now that they were mostly out of the water), and Mr. McLaughlin put his arm around Link and pushed him until they were so high up the beach the sand was no longer water-flattened.

People were asking all sorts of questions – no, he hadn’t taken the boy into the water, no, he didn’t know how the boy got out there, yes, he thought he was a good swimmer, no, he wasn’t scared – and then Mr. McLaughlin was using his professor-lawyer voice and telling everyone to leave Link alone. His grip on Link tightened.

“Too bad it was you, not me,” said Rhett as they walked back towards where they’d been using their skim boards, “because I wouldn’t have had to jump him in, I could have just walked.”

“Shut up, Rhett,” said Cole.

Link would have said this too, but his teeth were chattering. It was a little better when they got to their stuff and Mr. McLaughlin wrapped his towel around him. It kind of ended up over his face but that was okay because Rhett and Cole walked on either side of him back to their house.

\- - - - -

Mr. McLaughlin told them to shower off their feet, then went inside. After they’d washed the worst of the sand off themselves and the skim boards, Mama Di called for them to go around to the back patio, and that she’d bring lunch out to them. Link grabbed his favorite chair.

Mama Di brought out sandwiches for Rhett and Cole, but for Link she brought out a large bowl of blackberries, topped with vanilla ice cream. “I just heard what a hero you were!” she said. “Enjoy these, I’m going to use the rest for a cobbler.”

Cole grabbed his sandwich and said he was tired of the great outdoors, then followed his mother inside.

And suddenly Link remembered last night. He bit his lip and looked away.

“Mama said you want to go home,” said Rhett. “I think that’s stupid.”

“Thanks for that,” said Link. “That’s really helpful.”

“It’s stupid because, if you hadn’t been here, that little boy would have drowned. The tide was coming in. He must’ve just walked out and got stuck. He didn’t have much time left.”

Link nodded. He’d kind of known that.

“Were you scared?” Rhett asked.

Link shook his head. “I was afraid I was going to get into trouble for going into the water without an adult.” It sounded crazy to say this now. “Then, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to keep him above water. I wasn’t afraid for myself.”

“You need to work on a more dramatic telling,” said Rhett. “I’ll put some thought into it.”

He reached right into Link’s bowl and pulled out a blackberry. “Best friend tax,” he said.

* * * THE END * * *


End file.
